How to pass a list of files to grep?
That will execute a separate grep for each file; since grep can take many filenames and search them all, you can change the ; to + to tell find to pass all the matching filenames to grep at once: Some versions of grep (e.g. on non-embedded Linux or BSD or Mac OS X) have a -r option to make a recursive search.
How to pipe the output of a grep?
You need to use xargs ‘s -i switch: This takes the option after -i ( foo in this case) and replaces every occurrence of it in the command with the output of the first grep. grep | fgrep -f – file1 file2
How to pipe list of files returned by find command?
The -i argument to xargs allows you to insert the filename where required in the cat command line. The brackets are replaced by the filename piped into the cat command from find. Use ggrep. This will print the name and contents of files-only recursively..
How can I make grep print more than one file name?
To absolutely guarantee the file name is printed by grep (even if only one file is found, or the last invocation of grep is only given 1 file name), then add /dev/null to the xargs command line, so that there will always be at least two file names.
How to perform grep operation on all files in a directory stack?
In Linux, I normally use this command to recursively grep for a particular text within a directory: Use find. Seriously, it is the best way because then you can really see what files it’s operating on: Note, the -H is mac-specific, it shows the filename in the results.
How to use grep to search for strings in files on the shell?
2 The basic grep command syntax. The basic grep command syntax is as follows: grep ‘word’ filename grep ‘word’ file1 file2 file3 grep ‘string1 string2’ filename cat otherfile | grep ‘something’ command | grep ‘something’ command option1 | grep ‘data’ grep –color ‘data’ fileName.
What’s the difference between-Exec and find in grep?
Everything between -exec and ; is the command to execute; {} is replaced with the filename found by find. That will execute a separate grep for each file; since grep can take many filenames and search them all, you can change the ; to + to tell find to pass all the matching filenames to grep at once: